"You shut up if you don't want a bullet in your black head."

Jumbo lay silent after that. But his thoughts were busy.

"Bullet in mah haid, eh?" he mused, "mah goodness, ah don't want nuffin'

lak dat. Mah cocoanut feels now laik ah'd done tried ter b.u.t.t a locusmocus off'n de track. Wondah what deportentiousness uv all dis unusualauness done mean?"

His meditations were interrupted by a shout from the sh.o.r.e.

"Bring back those canoes at once!"

"Mah goodness, dat am de majah," exclaimed Jumbo, but to himself. "He shuh am po'ful mad. Wondah if dem boys is playin' pranks. If dey is dey'll be sorry fer it."

The black ventured to raise his head a little and peep up to see who was in the canoe with him. In doing so his eyes fell on another figure lying beside him. In the moonlight he could see the cords that bound it. The radiance of the moon also revealed the Boy Scout uniform.

"Gabriel's Ho'hn! Dat's one of dem Boy Scrouts!" he exclaimed, "an' mah gracious, ah wondah who dat fierce lookin' man am whose paddlin' dis yar boat. Reckon ah'd better lay quiet. He looks pretty frambunctious."

In the meantime, the aroused inmates of the camp had rushed to the sh.o.r.e.

They reached it just in time to see their entire flotilla of canoes being paddled swiftly off across the smooth, moonlit waters. Tubby and Hiram raised their rifles when a hoa.r.s.e laugh of defiance greeted the major's command to the marauders to halt. But in a flash the officer saw what they were about to do.

"None of that, boys," he ordered sharply, "put down those rifles."

"No use for them now," grumbled Tubby, "see, they've disappeared round that point."

"Let's get after them," suggested Hiram.

The major shook his head.

"Over this rough ground they could easily outdistance us," he said, "is anyone missing?"

It took but a few minutes to ascertain that both Rob and Jumbo were not among them.

"This is even more serious than the theft of the canoes," exclaimed the professor, "do you suppose that it was Hunt's gang that took them?"

"I don't doubt it," said the major, "who else would be interested in annoying us? But let's hear Merritt's story. What did you hear, my boy?"

Merritt soon told his narrative of the crackling twig and the struggle. A visit to the beach showed that there had, indeed, been a struggle before Rob had been landed in the canoe. A disconsolate silence fell on the little party.

"What are we to do now?" wondered Hiram.

"Get in pursuit of them as quick as possible, I should think," opined Tubby.

The major shook his head.

"Not much use in that," he decided, "we would not be likely to find them.

No, the best plan is to wait right here. If Rob escapes he will be able to find his way back again."

"Do you think they mean him harm?" inquired little Andy Bowles tremulously.

"I hardly think so," responded the major, "they wouldn't dare to do much more than keep him prisoner. But even that's bad enough."

"But what object can they have in all this except to annoy us?" asked the professor.

"Simple enough," said the major, rather bitterly, "I guess they are going to hold Rob as a hostage."

"What do you mean?"

"That if they manage to keep him prisoner we shan't see him again till I have given them the plans to the location of the Dangerfield treasure cave."

"They wouldn't dare----" began the professor. But the major interrupted him.

"We have already had a proof of what they will dare," he said, "they are as desperate a band of ruffians as I have ever heard of."

"I guess that's right," agreed Tubby, "but I'll bet," he added stoutly, "that Rob will find a way out of it yet."

In the meantime the canoes sped on through the night. Rob mentally tried to keep some track of the distance traversed, but he was totally unable to do so. He judged, however, when the paddles finally ceased their splashing, that they must have come some distance, for it was day-break when the canoes came to a halt.

Rob was roughly jerked to his feet and then, for the first time, became aware of Jumbo. For his back had been toward the negro in the canoe.

"Mah goodness, Ma.r.s.e Blake," exclaimed the black, "ain' dis de mostes'

parallelxillus sintuation dat you ever seen. Ah declar'----"

But further remarks on Jumbo's part were roughly checked by the man who had paddled the two prisoners to their present situation. He was none other than the big-limbed rascal, Jim Dale, who had played such a prominent part in the theft of the pocket-book.

"Shut your black head, n.i.g.g.e.r," he ordered gruffly.

"Ah ain't no n.i.g.g.ah. Ah's a 'spectabilious colored gent"; protested Jumbo, "'nd I kain't shut mah haid nohow 'cos it keeps openin' an'

shuttin' of its own accord whar you busted me on it."

But a fierce look from the man made even the garrulous negro subside. As for Rob, he disdained to talk to the fellow, or bandy words with him.

Instead, he gazed around while the other canoes, filched from the Boy Scout camp, were coming up. He noted that one was paddled by Peter b.u.mpus, while the third one contained Stonington Hunt and his son Freeman, the lad who had already given the Boy Scouts so much trouble.

It was a curious place in which the boy found himself. But Rob, with his scout instinct, could not but admire the skill with which it had been chosen as a retreat.

The spot was like a large basin with steep rock walls on all sides but one. On the open side a narrow neck of the lake led into this natural fortress. Great trees and luxurious water growth masked the entrance and anybody, not knowing of it, might have pa.s.sed by it on the lake side a hundred times without noting its presence. The canoes had been paddled through this natural screen of water maples and rank growth of all kinds, which had closed like a curtain behind them.

A beach, narrow except at the far end of the cove, ran round the water's edge at the foot of the rocky walls. A small tent was pitched there, and a fire was smoldering. Evidently the place had been occupied for some little time as a camp. Rob found himself wondering how the men, in whose power he now was, had ever found the place. He did not know then that Jim Dale and Pete b.u.mpus had once been a.s.sociated with a gang of moonshiners, whose retreat this had been before the officers of the revenue service broke the gang up and scattered them far and wide.

Hunt had gleaned enough knowledge from the plan, during his brief possession of it, to divine which route the party would take to the hidden treasure trove. He had, therefore, sought out this place when Dale and b.u.mpus told him of it. The boys' enemies had made straight for it, and had been encamped there some days awaiting the arrival of the party.

The notes of Andy Bowles' bugle floating out across the lake the night before had apprised them of the arrival of the party, and plans had immediately been made for a hasty descent on the Boy Scouts' mountain camp. How successful it had proved we already know. But of course, to Rob, all this was a mystery.

The canoes were grounded at the end of the cove on the broad strip of beach. Rob and Jumbo were at once ordered to get out, and Rob's leg-bonds being loosened and gag removed, he followed Jumbo on to the white sand.

Hardly had their feet touched it before Stonington Hunt and his rascally young son, the latter with a sneer on his face, also landed.

"Fell neatly into our little trap, didn't you?" jeered Stonington Hunt, staring straight at Rob with an insolent look.

"Yo' alls kin hev yo' trap fo' all I wants uv it"; snorted Jumbo indignantly, as Rob disdained to answer.

"Be quiet, you black idiot!" snapped Hunt, "we didn't want you, anyhow.

I've a good mind," he went on with a brutal sort of humor, "to have you thrown into the lake."